THE 



LADY MOWLSON SCHOLARSHIP 



AT CAMBRIDGE. 



BY 



ANDREW McFARLAND DAYIS, 



/ '^v'^^ )H 



THE 



LADY MOWLSON SCHOLARSHIP 



AT CAMBHIDGE. 



BY 



ANDREW McFARLAND DAVIS. 



FROM PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN 
SOCIETY, OCTOBER 21, 1892. 



WORCESTER, MASS. 

PRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON, 

311 Main Street. 

1893. 



V 



^v 



XN^ 



^^ 



THE LADY MOWLSON SCHOLAESHIP AT CAMBEIDGE. 



At the meeting of this Society held in Worcester, October 
21, 1887, I submitted a paper which was printed in the 
Proceedings of the Society under the title, "The first 
Scholarship at Harvard College." 

The founder of this Scholarship was described in the 
original document dedicating the fund to beneficiary pur- 
poses, as Lady Ann Mowlson of London, widow, but be- 
yond the information contained in these words nothing was 
at that time known about her. In alluding to this fact I 
made use, in the beforementioned paper, of the following 
language: "Notwithstanding the great interest which 
attaches to the name of Lady Mowlson, Quincy was com- 
pelled to sum up what he could find out about her in the 
paragraph ' Nothing is known of Lady Mowlson except 
that she was amonoj the earliest of the transatlantic benefac- 
tors of the College.' A grateful posterity, not content with 
merely knowing her name and holding up for admiration 
her liberality in thus generously endowing the distant Col- 
lege in the wilderness, would gladly know more of her. 
Perhaps a clue to her kinsfolk may be found in the desig- 
nation of ' John Weld now scholler in sd College ' as the 
first beneficiary of the exhibition." 

Ever since my attention was attracted to the subject, I 
have been watchful for clues which might clear up the mys- 
tery which surrounded the personality of Lady Mowlson. 
When Brown's Genesis of the United States came out I 
carefully examined the names therein given, of subscribers 



to American ventures, and was rewarded by discovering 
that one Thomas Mowlson was present at a meeting of 
the Court of Assistants of the Grocers' Company held at 
London, April 15, 1614.i 

This solitary item of what might possibly aid in my 
search, was all the information on the subject which I had 
been able to glean, up to last spring when I submitted to Mr. 
John Ward Dean, the editor of the New England Histori- 
cal and Genealogical Register, the manuscript of an article 
which was published in the July number of the Register, 
under title of "The Exhibitions of Harvard College prior 
to 1800." While this article was going through the press, 
Mr. Dean expressed great interest to know more about 
Lady Mowlson. His familiarity with sources of informa- 
tion upon points of genealogy enabled him to place at my 
disposal several references, the examination of which fur- 
nished considerable information relative to a certain Sir 
Thomas Mowlson prominent in London afiairs in the early 
part of the seventeenth century. He also kindly invoked 
the aid of Mr. Henry F. Waters, the accomplished geneal- 
ogist, who supplemented the foregoing work by an original 
investigation in England, which disclosed the fact that Sir 
Thomas died about 1638, leaving a widow. Dame Ann, who 
was alive in 1643. The information collected from these 
several sources will be found in the sequel. 

Sir Thomas Mowlson was a native of Hargrave-Stubbs, 
Cheshire, where his family settled about 1500. His name 
appears in a list of those present at a meeting of a Court of 
Assistants of the Grocers' Company, held in London, April 
15, 1614. His name also appears in the lists of sherijflfs for 
London and Middlesex, — 21st James L, 1624. In 1627, 
he founded at Hargrave-Stubbs a chapel, and endowed it 
with £40 per annum for a minister. At the same time he 



1 Brown's Genesis, Vol. II., Page 



eDdowed a school, adjoiDing the chapel, with £20 per 
annum "for the government, education and instruction of 
youth in grammar and virtue," and directed the overplus 
of rents arising from certain lands, then by him given, to 
be applied to the relief of such poor persons as the majority 
of the feofees should think fit. In 1633-34, he was an 
alderman of the City of London, and in March, 1634, the 
Lord Mayor having died, he was chosen to succeed in that 
government. He was knighted at Greenwich, on the first 
day of June, 1634. After the expiration of his term of 
office as Lord Mayor, his name is still found for a brief 
time among the aldermen. 

Traces of the esteem in which he was held are to be 
found in the character of his official work and correspond- 
ence. On the 17th of May, 1634, he reported to the 
Council the quantity of oats in store in the shops of the 
chandlers in London. On the 15th of July, the Commis- 
sioners of Pious Uses wrote to him relative to the procuring 
of contributions towards repairing St. Paul's. On the 24th 
of July, 1634, the King addressed a communication to Sir 
Thomas Mowlson, Lord Mayor, and the Aldermen of 
London, recommending a scheme for the improvement of 
the streets of London. This letter contains a suggestion 
for maintaining sidewalks, and for the introduction of water 
into the city, and is of itself of so much interest that I 
quote it in full. 

"It is not unknown to them (the Lord Mayor and 
Aldermen) with what readiness the late King gave encour- 
agement to propositioDS made* to him concerning the beauti- 
fying of the city of London. His endeavors have produced 
good efiect, the King, in confidence of their industry to 
advance a work so happily begun, recommends to them a 
proposition lately made to his Majesty by Daniel Nys, a 
gentleman of good understanding and experience, for beau- 
tifying the streets of the city by raising them to a conven- 
ient height, evenness and decency leaving an ample passage 



6 

for coaches, carts and horses, and reserving a competent 
part of the streets to be made even in a commodious manner 
and for the greater convenience of those that travel on 
foot, besides a handsome accommodation of water for 
cleansing the streets by pipes of lead so to be laid as will 
be found a work of great consequence for avoiding those 
unwholesome and contagious vapours which infest the city 
at all times. The King has therefore addressed this gentle- 
man to them, not doubting but that in conference they will 
find his proposition worthy of encouragemcDt." 

On the 16th of March, 1635-36, Sir Thomas, then an 
alderman, was associated with Sir Nicholas Rainton, alder- 
man, by order of Council to report on the petition of the 
" Tawyers and Skinners," Avhich was by order of Coun- 
cil referred to them. The report of the committee was 
made on the 22d of July. 

In 1638, the will of Sir Thomas Mowlson was probated. 
In 1657, Dame Ann Mowlson, his widow, executed a will 
which was proved in 1661.^ 

An analysis of the foregoing discloses the career of a suc- 
cessful and public-spirited merchant, who was honored by 
his fellow-citizens. In the height of his prosperity, mindful 
of the obligations imposed upon him by the accumulation in 
his hands of an undue proportion of the wealth of the land, 
his mind turned to his place of nativity in Cheshire, and he 
there established a beneficiary fund for religious, educa- 
tional and charitable purposes. He shared in the general 
interest which American ventures stirred up at that time in 
London, and his name is handed down to us in an American 
historical work through his §-ttendance at a meeting of the 
Court of Merchants of which he was a member. His rank 



1 Since this communication was laid before the Society, abstracts of the Wills 
of Sir Thomas and Lady Mowlson have been received by Mr. Dean and will 
appear in the Waters Gleanings in the January number of the New England 
Historical and Genealogical Register. From references in Lady Mowlson's will 
to her relatives, it mav be inferred that her familv name was Radcliffe. 



as knight gave him the title of Sir and entitled his wife to 
be addressed as Lady. Certain eccentricities in spelling on 
the part of those who recorded Lady Mowlson's name in 
the Massachusetts archives and in the college records were 
alluded to in the paper of October, 1887. In the several 
references which have been referred to herein the name is 
spelled either Moulson, or Mowlson, the former being the 
prevailing method. 

There is nothing in these references which will determine 
the theological opinions of Sir Thomas, but the language 
used by the author of the chapter in Ly son's Magna Brit- 
annia, in which he speaks of the chapel at Hargrave-Stubbs 
being endowed with £40 "for a minister" would indicate 
that Sir Thomas was a dissenter. This is not the word 
ordinarily used to designate a clergyman of the Church of 
England. Nor do I think that this inference is much weak- 
ened by the fact that the same author is authority for the 
statement that the Dean of Chester and the Rev. John 
OldershaWjVicar of Tarvin, were, in 1810, when the second 
volume of Magna Britannia was published, among the 
feofees of the trust. The Restoration effected many changes 
in trusts of similar nature, of which the conversion of that 
notably liberal institution, Emanuel College at Cambridge 
to its present high-church views is an illustration. In any 
event I do not wish to be understood as attaching much 
weight to the inference as to the theological opinions of Sir 
Thomas which I draw from the use of the word " minister " 
in describing the clergyman who was to officiate in his 
chapel. If he was a dissenter, it would have furnished one 
more reason why his widow should be called upon by the 
committee from Massachusetts Bay who were then solicit- 
ing funds in Great Britain. If he was not a dissenter there 
was no reason why she should not contribute. The contin- 
uous flow of funds which took place at this time from Old 
England to New England was not limited by any question 



8 

of theological belief between givers and receivers. The 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, 
was a Church of England organization. Its funds were 
used for the construction of an Indian college at Cambridge 
and its officers assented to the use of the buildins^ for dor- 
mitories for white students. The gleanings of Mr. Waters, 
now being published in the New England Historical and 
Genealogical Register, furnish abundant evidence of the 
widespread interest which was felt in England in the wel- 
fare of the colony of Massachusetts Bay. 

It was in 1643 that Thomas Weld, pastor, of Roxbury, 
in the Plantation of New England, received from the hands 
of Lady Ann Mowlson of London, widow, the full and 
entire sum of one hundred pounds, to be given to Harvard 
College in New England, the yearly revenue of which was 
according to her good and pious intention to be and remain 
as a perpetual stipend for and towards the perpetual main- 
tenance of some poor scholar. 

Lady Ann Mowlson, the relict of Sir Thomas, was then 
in the fifth year of her widowhood. Her survival at that 
period is attested by the execution of a will in 1657. The 
committee appointed by the General Court of Massachusetts 
Bay were then seeking aid in England. What more natu- 
ral than for them to turn to the wealthy widow of a man 
who had shown an interest in American affairs, who had 
while still living himself endowed a chapel, a school and a 
charitable fund, and who was probably in sympathy with 
the theological opinions of the members of the committee. 
All circumstances point to the identification of the founder 
of the Lady Mowlson Scholarship with the widow of the 
sometime Lord Mayor of London. If the proof is not 
positive in its character, still the chain of evidence is suffi- 
ciently strong to carry conviction to most minds. Those 
interested in the subject who accept these conclusions will 
rejoice that the mystery which has enshrouded the generous 



founder of the first scholarship in this continent has at 
last been removed.^ 



1 The sources of information upon which the above statements are based 
are as follows : — 

Calendar of State Papers (Domestic) 1633-34. 
Same series, 1634-35. 

Same series, 1636-37. 

The History of the Worthies of England, endeavored by Thomas Fuller, 

D.D., London, 1662. Nuttall's edition, London, 1840. 
Lyson's Magna Britannia. Vol. 2, Part 2, Cheshire. London, 1810. 
Brown's Genesis of the United States. 

Letter of Henry F. Waters to John W. Dean, dated London, 18th June, 
1892. 



